Starting from the botanical crazes inspired by Linnaeus in the 18th century, and exploring the variations it spawned — natural history, landscape architecture, polemical battles over botany's ...
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Starting from the botanical crazes inspired by Linnaeus in the 18th century, and exploring the variations it spawned — natural history, landscape architecture, polemical battles over botany's prurience — this book offers a fresh reading of the courtship novel from Jane Austen to George Eliot and Henry James. By reanimating a cultural understanding of botany and sexuality that we have lost, it provides a new and powerful account of the novel's role in scripting sexualized courtship, and illuminates how the novel and popular science together created a cultural figure, the blooming girl, that stood at the center of both fictional and scientific worlds.Less

Bloom : The Botanical Vernacular in the English Novel

Amy M. King

Published in print: 2003-10-09

Starting from the botanical crazes inspired by Linnaeus in the 18th century, and exploring the variations it spawned — natural history, landscape architecture, polemical battles over botany's prurience — this book offers a fresh reading of the courtship novel from Jane Austen to George Eliot and Henry James. By reanimating a cultural understanding of botany and sexuality that we have lost, it provides a new and powerful account of the novel's role in scripting sexualized courtship, and illuminates how the novel and popular science together created a cultural figure, the blooming girl, that stood at the center of both fictional and scientific worlds.

Like Job, Psalm 104 celebrates God’s diverse creation. Both Job and the psalm, in fact, share several animals in common, from the lion to Leviathan. The psalmist, however, highlights the botanical as ...
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Like Job, Psalm 104 celebrates God’s diverse creation. Both Job and the psalm, in fact, share several animals in common, from the lion to Leviathan. The psalmist, however, highlights the botanical as well as the biological. In his eyes, the cedars of Lebanon are among creation’s most majestic features. Whereas Job highlights the animals’ range and independence, the psalm emphasizes their respective habitats. Creation is a habitat for biodiversity, not just for humanity. Humanity is merely one species among many species, each seeking its livelihood within its prescribed environment or niche. As in Job, God is the provider and sustainer of life. Science, with its ongoing discovery of species, expands and deepens the psalmist’s awe, as well as underlines the fundamental importance of habitat.Less

The Passion of the Creator : The Manifold Nature of Nature in Psalm 104

William P. Brown

Published in print: 2010-01-29

Like Job, Psalm 104 celebrates God’s diverse creation. Both Job and the psalm, in fact, share several animals in common, from the lion to Leviathan. The psalmist, however, highlights the botanical as well as the biological. In his eyes, the cedars of Lebanon are among creation’s most majestic features. Whereas Job highlights the animals’ range and independence, the psalm emphasizes their respective habitats. Creation is a habitat for biodiversity, not just for humanity. Humanity is merely one species among many species, each seeking its livelihood within its prescribed environment or niche. As in Job, God is the provider and sustainer of life. Science, with its ongoing discovery of species, expands and deepens the psalmist’s awe, as well as underlines the fundamental importance of habitat.

The expansion of the British and Dutch mercantile empires from the 17th century was accompanied by a renewal of the old Babylonian concept of Imperial Botany, now made all the more effective by a new ...
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The expansion of the British and Dutch mercantile empires from the 17th century was accompanied by a renewal of the old Babylonian concept of Imperial Botany, now made all the more effective by a new marriage of private commerce with state power and scientific knowledge. By the 18th century, and largely thanks to agrarian entrepreneurs such as Townshend, Coke, and Tull, Britain was undergoing an agricultural revolution that would underpin the later industrial revolution and consequent population growth. Botany became all the rage in court circles across Europe, from Vienna to Madrid. Botanical gardens established throughout the Anglo-Dutch empires simultaneously served economic, scientific, and aesthetic purposes. Crops such as sugar, tea, coffee, and cocoa served both as stimuli for expansion and lucrative products for the maturing empires. Greater understanding of the mechanisms of plant reproduction enabled breeders to experiment with new hybrids and mutations in order to enhance crop variation.Less

Imperial botany and the early scientific breeders

Denis J. Murphy

Published in print: 2007-07-19

The expansion of the British and Dutch mercantile empires from the 17th century was accompanied by a renewal of the old Babylonian concept of Imperial Botany, now made all the more effective by a new marriage of private commerce with state power and scientific knowledge. By the 18th century, and largely thanks to agrarian entrepreneurs such as Townshend, Coke, and Tull, Britain was undergoing an agricultural revolution that would underpin the later industrial revolution and consequent population growth. Botany became all the rage in court circles across Europe, from Vienna to Madrid. Botanical gardens established throughout the Anglo-Dutch empires simultaneously served economic, scientific, and aesthetic purposes. Crops such as sugar, tea, coffee, and cocoa served both as stimuli for expansion and lucrative products for the maturing empires. Greater understanding of the mechanisms of plant reproduction enabled breeders to experiment with new hybrids and mutations in order to enhance crop variation.

The scientific practices and attitudes to science of the Quaker and Jewish communities are compared and contrasted. Quakers tended to be more involved in science — especially the observational ...
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The scientific practices and attitudes to science of the Quaker and Jewish communities are compared and contrasted. Quakers tended to be more involved in science — especially the observational sciences like botany — but they were somewhat reserved when it came to scientific theorizing. In contrast, Jews, although generally less involved in science, were philosophically more adventurous. Two important conclusions from this study relating to the late Victorian period are: first, in both communities, modernizers drew on contemporary science — including the theory of evolution — in opposing traditionalists; second (although for different reasons), Quakers and Jews were generally sympathetic to Darwin’s theory of evolution.Less

Historical Comparisons and Historiographical Reflections

Geoffrey Cantor

Published in print: 2005-09-22

The scientific practices and attitudes to science of the Quaker and Jewish communities are compared and contrasted. Quakers tended to be more involved in science — especially the observational sciences like botany — but they were somewhat reserved when it came to scientific theorizing. In contrast, Jews, although generally less involved in science, were philosophically more adventurous. Two important conclusions from this study relating to the late Victorian period are: first, in both communities, modernizers drew on contemporary science — including the theory of evolution — in opposing traditionalists; second (although for different reasons), Quakers and Jews were generally sympathetic to Darwin’s theory of evolution.

During the late seventeenth and eighteenth century, bloodletting as a treatment for common tropical diseases such as fevers and dysentery was superseded or supplemented by a host of new remedies. ...
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During the late seventeenth and eighteenth century, bloodletting as a treatment for common tropical diseases such as fevers and dysentery was superseded or supplemented by a host of new remedies. Some, such as the fabled bezoar stone, were of mysterious provenance, but excited great attention in Britain as well as in the colonies. Botanical remedies, such as cinchona bark and other febrifuges, also became very popular throughout the British Empire, their worth being established initially in the tropical colonies. Medical practitioners often engaged in botanical expeditions or entered into dialogue with indigenous practitioners to find other new drugs, some of which were exported from the colonies to Britain. What most of these medicines had in common was that they were supposed to have antiseptic properties: that is, they were able to counteract the putrefaction supposedly characteristic of tropical diseases.Less

Exotics and antiseptics

Mark Harrison

Published in print: 2010-09-16

During the late seventeenth and eighteenth century, bloodletting as a treatment for common tropical diseases such as fevers and dysentery was superseded or supplemented by a host of new remedies. Some, such as the fabled bezoar stone, were of mysterious provenance, but excited great attention in Britain as well as in the colonies. Botanical remedies, such as cinchona bark and other febrifuges, also became very popular throughout the British Empire, their worth being established initially in the tropical colonies. Medical practitioners often engaged in botanical expeditions or entered into dialogue with indigenous practitioners to find other new drugs, some of which were exported from the colonies to Britain. What most of these medicines had in common was that they were supposed to have antiseptic properties: that is, they were able to counteract the putrefaction supposedly characteristic of tropical diseases.

Darwin’s Man in Brazil is a scientific biography of Fritz Müller that presents relevant familial, institutional, methodological, philosophical, and political backgrounds for understanding Müller’s ...
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Darwin’s Man in Brazil is a scientific biography of Fritz Müller that presents relevant familial, institutional, methodological, philosophical, and political backgrounds for understanding Müller’s career. It emphasizes Müller’s central importance to the development of evolutionary biology between 1860 and 1890 and West’s striking claim that, among Darwin’s correspondents, Müller was Darwin’s closest intellectual kin. In the 1840s Müller had excellent training in Germany in anatomy, botany, marine biology, natural history, physiology, and zoology. A free thinker who refused to sign the Christian oaths required of teachers in Prussia, Müller emigrated to Brazil in 1852 to become a pioneer farmer and conduct research on tropical biology. He built his farm from scratch in a German settlement in a primeval forest in Santa Catarina province. In the 1860s he reorganized his biological research to test Darwin’s theory of evolution and conducted field studies to answer questions generated from a Darwinian perspective. He was unique among natural historians in testing Darwin’s theory of natural selection by investigating an enormous diversity of plants and animals rather than a relatively narrow range of taxa. In correspondence, Müller and Darwin introduced new topics to each other and worked out how best to articulate and test various Darwinian claims. Müller’s extensive publications, correspondence, and interactions with Darwin demonstrate that natural history provided stronger support for Darwin’s theory than was hitherto recognized. They also illuminate the communication networks that enabled biologists living far from the European centers to make dramatic contributions to biological theory and practice in the nineteenth century.Less

Darwin's Man in Brazil : The Evolving Science of Fritz Müller

David A. West

Published in print: 2016-07-19

Darwin’s Man in Brazil is a scientific biography of Fritz Müller that presents relevant familial, institutional, methodological, philosophical, and political backgrounds for understanding Müller’s career. It emphasizes Müller’s central importance to the development of evolutionary biology between 1860 and 1890 and West’s striking claim that, among Darwin’s correspondents, Müller was Darwin’s closest intellectual kin. In the 1840s Müller had excellent training in Germany in anatomy, botany, marine biology, natural history, physiology, and zoology. A free thinker who refused to sign the Christian oaths required of teachers in Prussia, Müller emigrated to Brazil in 1852 to become a pioneer farmer and conduct research on tropical biology. He built his farm from scratch in a German settlement in a primeval forest in Santa Catarina province. In the 1860s he reorganized his biological research to test Darwin’s theory of evolution and conducted field studies to answer questions generated from a Darwinian perspective. He was unique among natural historians in testing Darwin’s theory of natural selection by investigating an enormous diversity of plants and animals rather than a relatively narrow range of taxa. In correspondence, Müller and Darwin introduced new topics to each other and worked out how best to articulate and test various Darwinian claims. Müller’s extensive publications, correspondence, and interactions with Darwin demonstrate that natural history provided stronger support for Darwin’s theory than was hitherto recognized. They also illuminate the communication networks that enabled biologists living far from the European centers to make dramatic contributions to biological theory and practice in the nineteenth century.

This chapter examines three examples of non‐reductionist natural philosophy, something supported, at a philosophical level, by Locke's anti‐reductionist approach. The first is John Ray's rejection of ...
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This chapter examines three examples of non‐reductionist natural philosophy, something supported, at a philosophical level, by Locke's anti‐reductionist approach. The first is John Ray's rejection of the ideas that there is a single basis for botanical classification. The second is Stephen Gray's phenomenological account of electrical conductivity, which makes no attempt to account for the phenomena in terms of underlying corpuscular activity. The third is Étienne Geoffroy's phenomenological account of chemical combination, which likewise makes no attempt to account for the phenomena in terms of underlying corpuscular activity. The chapter concludes with a discussion of horizontal versus vertical forms of explanation.Less

Explaining the Phenomena

Stephen Gaukroger

Published in print: 2010-11-25

This chapter examines three examples of non‐reductionist natural philosophy, something supported, at a philosophical level, by Locke's anti‐reductionist approach. The first is John Ray's rejection of the ideas that there is a single basis for botanical classification. The second is Stephen Gray's phenomenological account of electrical conductivity, which makes no attempt to account for the phenomena in terms of underlying corpuscular activity. The third is Étienne Geoffroy's phenomenological account of chemical combination, which likewise makes no attempt to account for the phenomena in terms of underlying corpuscular activity. The chapter concludes with a discussion of horizontal versus vertical forms of explanation.

This chapter begins with a brief discussion of the focus on this book: the girl “in bloom,” or the female whose social and sexual maturation is expressed by the use of a word (bloom) whose genealogy ...
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This chapter begins with a brief discussion of the focus on this book: the girl “in bloom,” or the female whose social and sexual maturation is expressed by the use of a word (bloom) whose genealogy can be traced back to the function of the bloom or flower in Linnaeus's botanical system. The chapter then discusses the use of bloom in 18th- and 19th-century fiction, and the one-to-one correspondences between botanical theory and novelistic practice. An overview of the subsequent chapters is presented.Less

The Girl and the Water Lily

Amy M. King

Published in print: 2003-10-09

This chapter begins with a brief discussion of the focus on this book: the girl “in bloom,” or the female whose social and sexual maturation is expressed by the use of a word (bloom) whose genealogy can be traced back to the function of the bloom or flower in Linnaeus's botanical system. The chapter then discusses the use of bloom in 18th- and 19th-century fiction, and the one-to-one correspondences between botanical theory and novelistic practice. An overview of the subsequent chapters is presented.

This chapter focuses on the set of meanings about botany and botanical practices that were forming in the 18th century to understand the botanical vernacular in its emergent stages. It argues that ...
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This chapter focuses on the set of meanings about botany and botanical practices that were forming in the 18th century to understand the botanical vernacular in its emergent stages. It argues that the bloom narrative emerged from the Linnaean context and then developed as a literary narrative; bloom does not shift in accordance with the botanical changes of the 1830s and beyond but rather with the literary tides out of which that narrative grew. Maria Edgeworth's Belinda, and the poems of Charlotte Smith and Erasmus Darwin are analyzed.Less

Imaginative Literature and the Politics of Botany

Amy M. King

Published in print: 2003-10-09

This chapter focuses on the set of meanings about botany and botanical practices that were forming in the 18th century to understand the botanical vernacular in its emergent stages. It argues that the bloom narrative emerged from the Linnaean context and then developed as a literary narrative; bloom does not shift in accordance with the botanical changes of the 1830s and beyond but rather with the literary tides out of which that narrative grew. Maria Edgeworth's Belinda, and the poems of Charlotte Smith and Erasmus Darwin are analyzed.

This chapter begins with a discussion of Greek medicine. In the lifetime of Pythagoras the physicians of Croton enjoyed the greatest renown. The volume of evidence on medicine in Croton allows us to ...
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This chapter begins with a discussion of Greek medicine. In the lifetime of Pythagoras the physicians of Croton enjoyed the greatest renown. The volume of evidence on medicine in Croton allows us to judge its nature and its role in the development of Greek medicine. The discussion then turns to physiology and anatomy, embryology, and botany.Less

Medicine and Life Sciences

Leonid Zhmud

Published in print: 2012-05-24

This chapter begins with a discussion of Greek medicine. In the lifetime of Pythagoras the physicians of Croton enjoyed the greatest renown. The volume of evidence on medicine in Croton allows us to judge its nature and its role in the development of Greek medicine. The discussion then turns to physiology and anatomy, embryology, and botany.

Was there a conservative Enlightenment? Could a self-proclaimed man of learning and progressive science also have been an agent of monarchy and reaction? Cadwallader Colden (1688–1776), an educated ...
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Was there a conservative Enlightenment? Could a self-proclaimed man of learning and progressive science also have been an agent of monarchy and reaction? Cadwallader Colden (1688–1776), an educated Scottish emigrant and powerful colonial politician, was at the forefront of American intellectual culture in the mid-eighteenth century. While living in rural New York, he recruited family, friends, servants, and slaves into multiple scientific ventures and built a transatlantic network of contacts and correspondents that included Benjamin Franklin and Carl Linnaeus. Over several decades, Colden pioneered colonial botany, produced new theories of animal and human physiology, authored an influential history of the Iroquois, and developed bold new principles of physics and an engaging explanation of the cause of gravity. This book traces the life and ideas of this fascinating and controversial “gentleman-scholar.” It explores the overlapping ideological, social, and political worlds of this earliest of New York intellectuals. Colden and other learned colonials used intellectual practices to assert their gentility and establish their social and political superiority, but their elitist claims to cultural authority remained flimsy and open to widespread local derision. Although Colden, who governed New York as an unpopular Crown loyalist during the imperial crises of the 1760s and 1770s, was brutally lampooned by the New York press, his scientific work, which was published in Europe, raised the international profile of American intellectualism.Less

The Enlightenment of Cadwallader Colden : Empire, Science, and Intellectual Culture in British New York

John M. Dixon

Published in print: 2016-03-17

Was there a conservative Enlightenment? Could a self-proclaimed man of learning and progressive science also have been an agent of monarchy and reaction? Cadwallader Colden (1688–1776), an educated Scottish emigrant and powerful colonial politician, was at the forefront of American intellectual culture in the mid-eighteenth century. While living in rural New York, he recruited family, friends, servants, and slaves into multiple scientific ventures and built a transatlantic network of contacts and correspondents that included Benjamin Franklin and Carl Linnaeus. Over several decades, Colden pioneered colonial botany, produced new theories of animal and human physiology, authored an influential history of the Iroquois, and developed bold new principles of physics and an engaging explanation of the cause of gravity. This book traces the life and ideas of this fascinating and controversial “gentleman-scholar.” It explores the overlapping ideological, social, and political worlds of this earliest of New York intellectuals. Colden and other learned colonials used intellectual practices to assert their gentility and establish their social and political superiority, but their elitist claims to cultural authority remained flimsy and open to widespread local derision. Although Colden, who governed New York as an unpopular Crown loyalist during the imperial crises of the 1760s and 1770s, was brutally lampooned by the New York press, his scientific work, which was published in Europe, raised the international profile of American intellectualism.

This chapter reflects upon three modeling scenarios — the aesthetics, the mimetic (Swann as model), and the scientific — in order to explore some key concepts and structures: repetition and ...
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This chapter reflects upon three modeling scenarios — the aesthetics, the mimetic (Swann as model), and the scientific — in order to explore some key concepts and structures: repetition and reproduction, sameness and difference, and affective and objective relationships with the law. These pairs are all variations generated by the self-model pair, and offer different perspectives on the dialogue between the particular and the general in A la recherche.Less

Modelling

Nicola Luckhurst

Published in print: 2000-02-17

This chapter reflects upon three modeling scenarios — the aesthetics, the mimetic (Swann as model), and the scientific — in order to explore some key concepts and structures: repetition and reproduction, sameness and difference, and affective and objective relationships with the law. These pairs are all variations generated by the self-model pair, and offer different perspectives on the dialogue between the particular and the general in A la recherche.

This book is a compilation of thirty-one chapters which contain discussions presented at the twentieth annual international conference on Virginia Woolf. This volume explores Woolf's complex ...
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This book is a compilation of thirty-one chapters which contain discussions presented at the twentieth annual international conference on Virginia Woolf. This volume explores Woolf's complex engagement with the natural world, an engagement that was as political as it was aesthetic. The diversity of topics within this collection—ecofeminism, the nature of time, the nature of the self, nature and sporting, botany, climate, and landscape, just to name a few—fosters a deeper understanding of the nature of nature in Woolf's works.Less

Virginia Woolf and the Natural World

Published in print: 2011-06-01

This book is a compilation of thirty-one chapters which contain discussions presented at the twentieth annual international conference on Virginia Woolf. This volume explores Woolf's complex engagement with the natural world, an engagement that was as political as it was aesthetic. The diversity of topics within this collection—ecofeminism, the nature of time, the nature of the self, nature and sporting, botany, climate, and landscape, just to name a few—fosters a deeper understanding of the nature of nature in Woolf's works.

The Profit of the Earth is a new history of American agricultural development, characterizing crop seeds as deep time technologies transformed by millennia of human intervention. While the ...
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The Profit of the Earth is a new history of American agricultural development, characterizing crop seeds as deep time technologies transformed by millennia of human intervention. While the contemporary United States is a patchwork of large-scale monocultures, the book explores unrealized alternatives, from a Midwestern prairie harvested for production of botanic medicines to an American South populated by smallholders cultivating tea. Understanding why these futures were unrealized, and at what cost, conjures the histories of diverse people, plants, and knowledge on the move. Weaving together the lives of German and Russian immigrant farmers, British colonial officers, prairie plant collectors, and Ohio pharmacists, the book explores how institutionalized research and development represented and transformed diverse local knowledge of plants and their cultivation. Fullilove recasts the amber waves of grain immortalized in "America the Beautiful" not as an inherited Eden, but rather a novel landscape constructed by transplanted seeds and the skilled labor of willing and unwilling immigrants. Through narratives of improvisation, appropriation, and loss, the author explores contradictions between ideologies of property rights and common use that persist in national and international development, challenging readers to rethink fantasies of global agriculture’s past and future.Less

The Profit of the Earth : The Global Seeds of American Agriculture

Courtney Fullilove

Published in print: 2017-04-19

The Profit of the Earth is a new history of American agricultural development, characterizing crop seeds as deep time technologies transformed by millennia of human intervention. While the contemporary United States is a patchwork of large-scale monocultures, the book explores unrealized alternatives, from a Midwestern prairie harvested for production of botanic medicines to an American South populated by smallholders cultivating tea. Understanding why these futures were unrealized, and at what cost, conjures the histories of diverse people, plants, and knowledge on the move. Weaving together the lives of German and Russian immigrant farmers, British colonial officers, prairie plant collectors, and Ohio pharmacists, the book explores how institutionalized research and development represented and transformed diverse local knowledge of plants and their cultivation. Fullilove recasts the amber waves of grain immortalized in "America the Beautiful" not as an inherited Eden, but rather a novel landscape constructed by transplanted seeds and the skilled labor of willing and unwilling immigrants. Through narratives of improvisation, appropriation, and loss, the author explores contradictions between ideologies of property rights and common use that persist in national and international development, challenging readers to rethink fantasies of global agriculture’s past and future.

History, British and Irish Modern History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine

This chapter examines the developments in the teaching of the so-called small sciences at Oxford University in England from 1914 to 1939. These small sciences include botany, zoology, geology, ...
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This chapter examines the developments in the teaching of the so-called small sciences at Oxford University in England from 1914 to 1939. These small sciences include botany, zoology, geology, mineralogy and crystallography, astronomy, history of science, and history of anthropology. These subjects were recognized by the university with a chair, a readership, and a curatorship but they existed almost totally outside the colleges. These subjects were not only peripheral to the colleges, they were small and attracted only a few undergraduates and in some cases regular teaching was not offered.Less

Small Sciences

Jack Morrell

Published in print: 1997-12-04

This chapter examines the developments in the teaching of the so-called small sciences at Oxford University in England from 1914 to 1939. These small sciences include botany, zoology, geology, mineralogy and crystallography, astronomy, history of science, and history of anthropology. These subjects were recognized by the university with a chair, a readership, and a curatorship but they existed almost totally outside the colleges. These subjects were not only peripheral to the colleges, they were small and attracted only a few undergraduates and in some cases regular teaching was not offered.

Avoiding Attack discusses the diversity of mechanisms by which prey avoid predator attacks and explores how such defensive mechanisms have evolved through natural selection. It considers how ...
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Avoiding Attack discusses the diversity of mechanisms by which prey avoid predator attacks and explores how such defensive mechanisms have evolved through natural selection. It considers how potential prey avoid detection, how they make themselves unprofitable to attack, how they communicate this status, and how other species have exploited these signals. Using carefully selected examples of camouflage, mimicry, and warning signals drawn from a wide range of species and ecosystems, the authors summarize the latest research into these fascinating adaptations, developing mathematical models where appropriate and making recommendations for future study.This second edition has been extensively rewritten, particularly in the application of modern genetic research techniques which have transformed our recent understanding of adaptations in evolutionary genomics and phylogenetics. The book also employs a more integrated and systematic approach, ensuring that each chapter has a broader focus on the evolutionary and ecological consequences of anti-predator adaptation. The field has grown and developed considerably over the last decade with an explosion of new research literature, making this new edition timely.Less

Graeme D. RuxtonWilliam L. AllenThomas N. SherrattMichael P. Speed

Published in print: 2018-07-26

Avoiding Attack discusses the diversity of mechanisms by which prey avoid predator attacks and explores how such defensive mechanisms have evolved through natural selection. It considers how potential prey avoid detection, how they make themselves unprofitable to attack, how they communicate this status, and how other species have exploited these signals. Using carefully selected examples of camouflage, mimicry, and warning signals drawn from a wide range of species and ecosystems, the authors summarize the latest research into these fascinating adaptations, developing mathematical models where appropriate and making recommendations for future study.This second edition has been extensively rewritten, particularly in the application of modern genetic research techniques which have transformed our recent understanding of adaptations in evolutionary genomics and phylogenetics. The book also employs a more integrated and systematic approach, ensuring that each chapter has a broader focus on the evolutionary and ecological consequences of anti-predator adaptation. The field has grown and developed considerably over the last decade with an explosion of new research literature, making this new edition timely.

This chapter discusses Alexander and Kellogg's shift from collecting birds and small mammals to collecting plants. It stresses that Alexander did not abandon her museums; rather, she just stopped ...
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This chapter discusses Alexander and Kellogg's shift from collecting birds and small mammals to collecting plants. It stresses that Alexander did not abandon her museums; rather, she just stopped collecting for them. Collecting plants seemed like an appropriate choice, since Alexander was already over seventy by now. The chapter states Alexander's awareness over the loss of native flora in western North America and Hawaii. It also looks at the changes to the women's usual cycle of activity due to their transition to botany, their plant collecting trips, and the struggle between the University Herbarium and Willis Linn Jepson to acquire Alexander's extensive plant collection.Less

The Switch to Botany

Barbara R. Stein

Published in print: 2001-10-18

This chapter discusses Alexander and Kellogg's shift from collecting birds and small mammals to collecting plants. It stresses that Alexander did not abandon her museums; rather, she just stopped collecting for them. Collecting plants seemed like an appropriate choice, since Alexander was already over seventy by now. The chapter states Alexander's awareness over the loss of native flora in western North America and Hawaii. It also looks at the changes to the women's usual cycle of activity due to their transition to botany, their plant collecting trips, and the struggle between the University Herbarium and Willis Linn Jepson to acquire Alexander's extensive plant collection.

This chapter draws attention to the period between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, when the European attitude toward punishment shifted to an official level. Public trials and prisons took ...
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This chapter draws attention to the period between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, when the European attitude toward punishment shifted to an official level. Public trials and prisons took the place of public torture and execution, and focus moved to the issue of whether malefactors might be reformed. Even as techniques of confinement, isolation, and regulation grew refined in Metropolitan prison architecture, cruder structures of punishment took shape on the periphery. The Australian system faded away, making a lasting impression and echoing across the English Channel, where French officials sought solutions for their own dilemmas of crime. Glowing references to Australia and proposals to establish an overseas prison appeared frequently during the first half of the nineteenth century. The double logic of the British system also drove the French imagination. Proposals alternately concentrated on a desire to punish criminals and get rid of their presence from the Metropole, and a hope of furthering the work of colonial expansion and economic progress.Less

Botany Bay to Devil's Island

Peter Redfield

Published in print: 2000-12-19

This chapter draws attention to the period between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, when the European attitude toward punishment shifted to an official level. Public trials and prisons took the place of public torture and execution, and focus moved to the issue of whether malefactors might be reformed. Even as techniques of confinement, isolation, and regulation grew refined in Metropolitan prison architecture, cruder structures of punishment took shape on the periphery. The Australian system faded away, making a lasting impression and echoing across the English Channel, where French officials sought solutions for their own dilemmas of crime. Glowing references to Australia and proposals to establish an overseas prison appeared frequently during the first half of the nineteenth century. The double logic of the British system also drove the French imagination. Proposals alternately concentrated on a desire to punish criminals and get rid of their presence from the Metropole, and a hope of furthering the work of colonial expansion and economic progress.

This thoroughly revised, entirely rewritten edition of what is the essential reference on California's diverse and ever-changing vegetation now brings readers a state-of-the-art view of California's ...
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This thoroughly revised, entirely rewritten edition of what is the essential reference on California's diverse and ever-changing vegetation now brings readers a state-of-the-art view of California's plant ecosystems. Integrating decades of research, community ecologists and field botanists describe and classify California's vegetation types, identify environmental factors that determine the distribution of vegetation types, analyze the role of disturbance regimes in vegetation dynamics, chronicle change due to human activities, identify conservation issues, describe restoration strategies, and prioritize directions for new research. Several new chapters address statewide issues such as the historic appearance and impact of introduced and invasive plants, the soils of California, and more.Less

Terrestrial Vegetation of California, 3rd Edition

Published in print: 2007-07-17

This thoroughly revised, entirely rewritten edition of what is the essential reference on California's diverse and ever-changing vegetation now brings readers a state-of-the-art view of California's plant ecosystems. Integrating decades of research, community ecologists and field botanists describe and classify California's vegetation types, identify environmental factors that determine the distribution of vegetation types, analyze the role of disturbance regimes in vegetation dynamics, chronicle change due to human activities, identify conservation issues, describe restoration strategies, and prioritize directions for new research. Several new chapters address statewide issues such as the historic appearance and impact of introduced and invasive plants, the soils of California, and more.

Early Spanish explorers in the late eighteenth century found springtime California covered with spectacular carpets of wildflowers from San Francisco to San Diego. Yet today, invading plant species ...
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Early Spanish explorers in the late eighteenth century found springtime California covered with spectacular carpets of wildflowers from San Francisco to San Diego. Yet today, invading plant species have devastated this nearly forgotten botanical heritage. The book synthesizes a unique and wide-ranging array of sources—from the historic accounts of those early explorers to the writings of early American botanists in the nineteenth century, newspaper accounts in the twentieth century, and modern ecological theory—to give the most comprehensive historical analysis available of the dramatic transformation of California's wildflower prairies. At the same time, this book challenges much current thinking on the subject, critically evaluating the hypothesis that perennial bunchgrasses were once a dominant feature of California's landscape. Instead, it argues that wildflowers filled this role. As the book examines the changes in the state's landscape over the past three centuries, it brings new perspectives to topics including restoration ecology, conservation, and fire management.Less

Richard Minnich

Published in print: 2008-06-18

Early Spanish explorers in the late eighteenth century found springtime California covered with spectacular carpets of wildflowers from San Francisco to San Diego. Yet today, invading plant species have devastated this nearly forgotten botanical heritage. The book synthesizes a unique and wide-ranging array of sources—from the historic accounts of those early explorers to the writings of early American botanists in the nineteenth century, newspaper accounts in the twentieth century, and modern ecological theory—to give the most comprehensive historical analysis available of the dramatic transformation of California's wildflower prairies. At the same time, this book challenges much current thinking on the subject, critically evaluating the hypothesis that perennial bunchgrasses were once a dominant feature of California's landscape. Instead, it argues that wildflowers filled this role. As the book examines the changes in the state's landscape over the past three centuries, it brings new perspectives to topics including restoration ecology, conservation, and fire management.